Recommendation: PGA Tour 2K23 or EA Sports PGA Tour?

[MrArlingtonBeach]

I will also say, since career mode seems to be at the heart of the question...the better "career mode" for PGA 2K23 is TGCTours, but that is not something that is quick or easy to get the most out of.

You essentially have to play 4 rounds each week in an in-game society, and you MUST play on Master swing (the second most-difficult setting in the game) right off the bat. There are no TGCTours that use less than Master swing - even the 3-Click tour is on Master.

You also have to go through qualifying just to get a tour card...which is not guaranteed. If you don't qualify in one week, you have to try all over again the next week.

TGCT a really cool community and is very in-depth, but to have any success, it requires a lot of time and willingness to get as good at the game as possible to compete. And many of the people on tour have been playing this series for almost 10 years now.

The positive is that when you qualify and get a card, you get placed in a flight with others equal to your skill level, and you do get to rise up the ranks if you play well enough...that said, you can get demoted and even lose your card if you don't.

TL;DR - TGCTours is the best "career mode" in PGA 2K23, but it requires a ton of time and skill to get the most out of it.

[crques]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I truly appreciate it. Once I get my tax refund I might just pick them both up. I was sold on the EA one, but then I read that you can play on custom courses on 2K, which seems like a cool feature to have.

[lowpaiddonkey10]

Quote: Originally Posted by crques

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I truly appreciate it. Once I get my tax refund I might just pick them both up. I was sold on the EA one, but then I read that you can play on custom courses on 2K, which seems like a cool feature to have.

You can find all of those user created courses here along with comments from the designers themselves.


https://tgctours.proboards.com/

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Quote: Originally Posted by lowpaiddonkey10

You can find all of those user created courses here along with comments from the designers themselves. https://tgctours.proboards.com/

I would also add this: https://www.tgctours.com/Course/Tgc2...=&Grid-filter=

That's the database of "Approved" and "Tour Worthy" courses for TGCTours. Each of the courses in that database has been looked at by a reviewer, and has been judged to be potentially useable for tour play.

Not every designer posts in the forums that lowpaiddonkey linked to. So the database is the way to see the total collection of courses people submit to TGCTours in a list that can be sorted by a variety of filters.

[golfnut67]

Quote: Originally Posted by lowpaiddonkey10

If for no other reason than EA has an actual career mode at all. 2k's career mode is laughable. IF you have the time to try to get at least halfway decent and are OK with just playing solo rounds on some pretty nice courses go for 2k23. There are hundreds of good created courses EA has like 30 or so. 2k also has a real live 3 click mode that at Legend is quite the challenge. Unless you have a good PC or current gen console and have a 4k display you really can't play EA and appreciate the visuals at all. Believe me I tried to play it on the PS5 through a decent 1080 panel and it looked dreadful.

LPD, that really surprises me about it looking bad on PS5. I play it on Performance mode, plugged in via HDMI to a $350 65 inch TV from 4 years ago, and it's visually gorgeous. What gives?

I was just going to chime in and agree with the previous posts saying EA would be better for career mode and also point out that 2k is not nearly in the same ballbark (golf course?) visually compared to EA.

[lowpaiddonkey10]

Quote: Originally Posted by golfnut67

LPD, that really surprises me about it looking bad on PS5. I play it on Performance mode, plugged in via HDMI to a $350 65 inch TV from 4 years ago, and it's visually gorgeous. What gives? I was just going to chime in and agree with the previous posts saying EA would be better for career mode and also point out that 2k is not nearly in the same ballbark (golf course?) visually compared to EA.

Believe me it looked horrible on my 1080 panel and mine is pretty decent. 2k23 actually looks pretty good considering its visual limitations currently. If EA's game comes on the digital store for 20 bucks I'll give it another shot.

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Quote: Originally Posted by lowpaiddonkey10

Believe me it looked horrible on my 1080 panel and mine is pretty decent. 2k23 actually looks pretty good considering its visual limitations currently. If EA's game comes on the digital store for 20 bucks I'll give it another shot.

I have a pretty basic, cheap Vizio smart TV that I play the PS5 on...and it's really not close when it comes to visuals.

EA has moments when it looks photo-realistic to me on my $175, 37-inch screen. Sun thru the clouds at Royal Liverpool, morning rounds at Whistling Straits, any moment at Augusta, really.

I think there are points where EA's game does lack visual punch (Wolf Creek looks like a mobile game, and some textures don't render perfectly) but the lows in EA's game still outpace 2K's highs.

The 2K player models alone are basically archaic at this point, and the lighting model is very wonky - a course can look pretty good in one time of day setting, but be visually unbearable in another. Terrain can have tearing, and finer details don't stand out like they do in EA. And certain textures don't show up until you're right on top of them - like grasses. There's other things like women's hair not moving, or clothing not moving, etc. Those things just look plastic-y and unnatural on the character in 2K.

And I still get lag on courses built in 2K23 on my PS5...there's a course I love called the Killarn Club, but I can't play it because the game can't handle it.

I know visuals can sometimes be a personal preference thing, but I feel the it's the one area where there's no contest between the two games.

[sportsgamingguy2023]

Agree with MrArlington.

You can say a lot about the EA game based on your skill level and what you think a golf video game should be...but one thing you can't really hang your hat on is how terrible it looks. It's one of the best looking games on the market now.